It is common practice in the paper art to provide holes or perforations along the margin of a sheet to allow the sheet to be accomodated in a ring binder or the like. It is also conventional, where the sheet is to be subjected to considerable use or stress, to provide a zone of reinforcing material at least around each hole or extending continuously along the perforated margin and thereby increase the tearing strength of the paper sheet in the region of the holes to prevent the sheet from becoming loose in the ring binder or similar system in which it is incorporated, a good example of such apparatus being disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,925,144 and 3,926,713. However, a serious limitation with these apparatuses as well as with other similar apparatuses known in the art, is that the advance of the strip and substrate must be halted while the strip is being severed, hindering the rate at which these apparatuses can finish reinforced sheets.
In another known apparatus for applying strip reinforcing to sheet material, rather than stopping the advance of the strip and sheet during severing of the strip, the cutting device is displaced along with the strip and sheet while the strip is being severed and then shuttled back again to a starting point. The drawback with this particular approach is the complexity and difficulty in trying to maintain the coordination between the shuttling cutting device and the trailing edge of the sheet substrate, so that in practice, the strip is never severed flush with the trailing edge of the sheet but always leaves a slight overhang, which must be trimmed in a further step or folded under onto the other side of the sheet.